Unable to format Intel 1TB 660P M.2 SSD

[KCain1]

Hello,

Recently I purchased a new Intel 1TB 660 M.2 SSD drive to install on my PC for extra game storage. I was able to physically install the drive however, the drive is not showing up in Disk management preventing me from formatting it properly. Although the drive is detected by my bios, and is displayed in my Device manager and storage spaces. The driver for the SSD should be up to date as I was able to check via the online Intel driver and support assistant.

Could someone please help me properly install and format this drive so I can use it as additional gaming storage?

Details of my PC:

OS: W10 64bit

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170-HD3P-CF

Processor: Intel i5 6500

Memory: 16GB

Graphics Card: Nvidia GTX 970

Storage Drive 1 (W10 Drive): Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB

Storage Drive 2: Western Digital Blue 1TB HDD

Storage Drive 3: Intel® SSD 660p Series (Problem Drive)

[LeonWaksman]

·        If you don't see the Intel 660P drive in Disk Management, press Action in menu and then Rescan Discs.

•    If your see the new drive but it is not initialized, Right-click the drive marked as "Unknown" and "Not Initialized," and select Initialize Disk.
•    Select GPT (GUID Partition Table) and press OK
•    Once the drive is initialized, right-click the Unallocated space, and select New Simple Volume
•    Click Next.
•    Choose the volume size or leave the default size if you're planning to use the entire hard drive to store files.
•    Click Next.
•    Select a drive letter from the drop-down menu.
•    Click Next.
•    Select the NTFS file system.
•    On "Allocation unit size," leave the Default option.
•   Type a descriptive name in Volume label field.
•   Clear the Perform a quick format option.
•   Click Next.
•   Click Finish. Once you completed the steps, Windows 10 will set up a new partition and properly format the hard drive.

Leon

[KCain1]

Thanks for the quick reply Leon,

I've tried to rescan disks in disk management but I still cannot get disks management to detect the drive.

V/r,

Kyran

[LeonWaksman]

1. Try this:
2. Click on Windows +R key. In the Run Windows, enter command mdsched and press OK. Yes I know, this is Windows Memory Memory Diagnostic and we are looking for SSD. However, it can help, so try this.
3. Click on "Restart now..." and let the computer reboot and finish this test.
4. Open Disk Manager and check if you can see the new drive now.

Leon

[KCain1 · Accepted solution]

So I finally got it to show up in disk management and format the drive. 😀

From the control panel I went to storage spaces and removed the drive and the associated pools and did a system restart. The drive was then detected as a disk and I was able to format it properly using the disk formatting instructions that Leon provided in his first reply.

Thanks for the help!